By that afternoon, however, several videos posted on social media showed Ukrainian troops crossing what Gadchev had earlier claimed was Russian-held territory. A video shows Ukrainian soldiers raising a flag over the town of Balakliia. Another showed excited pensioners welcoming soldiers and giving them pancakes. That afternoon, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that Ukrainian forces had seized more than 1,000 square kilometers of territory. “We are moving forward,” General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, wrote on Facebook on Friday. “We clearly know what we are fighting for and we will definitely win.” The Kremlin declined to comment on the attack and referred questions about it to the Defense Ministry, according to Reuters. The rapid advance of Ukraine’s latest offensive has threatened key Russian supply lines in the eastern Donbas region and comes a week after Kyiv launched a separate offensive in the south, around the city of Kherson. Both operations show that Ukrainian forces, bolstered by Western high-precision weapons, are taking the initiative after six months on the defensive. Speaking after a NATO meeting in Brussels, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted “positive” signs that Kyiv was recapturing territory. “It’s early days, but it’s proven to be making real progress. . .[making]a significant advance, moving about 45 to 50 kilometers into an area beyond the existing Russian line,” he said. He added that while it was early days, Ukraine was “moving forward in a very deliberate way with a strong plan and, crucially, enabled by resources that many of us are providing.” In Prague, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also noted “success in Kherson now” and “some success in Kharkiv”, adding that it was “very, very encouraging”.

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Together, the attacks boosted national morale, undermined Moscow’s plans to annex newly captured territories through fake referendums, rebuilt military momentum ahead of the winter and served to show Western allies that the massive amounts of military and economic aid they poured into country were worth it. “What does Ukraine’s effective counterattack tell the world?” Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said on Twitter on Friday. That Ukraine has the ability to take back the occupied territories and that “there will be no freezing of this conflict,” he wrote. Ukraine has “proved that it can effectively use modern Western weapons” and Russian “troops must get out [and] it will hurt,” he added. The latter offensive was clearly faster and more successful than the southern offensive around Kherson. Its aim, analysts say, appears to be to cut off Russian supply lines and trap Russian forces around Izyum, a strategic flashpoint in the Donbass. By Friday afternoon, photos posted on social media showed Ukrainian troops on the outskirts of the strategic city of Kupyansk, from which they could cut off logistical supplies for Russian troops in Izyum. A Ukrainian military officer said the troops were on the outskirts of Kupyansk, a city that just days ago was 70 kilometers from the front lines and deep in Russian-held parts of northeastern Ukraine. Citing an official deployed by Russia to the region, Russia’s Ria Novosti news agency reported that Ukrainian attempts to storm the city had failed. One reason for the offensive’s success, according to Michael Kofman, chief Russia analyst at the CNA think-tank, is that Russian forces were under-resourced after Moscow “deployed most of its best troops in Kherson” in anticipation of the long-awaited Ukraine. attack there. When Ukraine struck, Russian forces were “caught off guard, which resulted in an uncoordinated withdrawal,” said Konrad Muzyka of Rochan Consulting, a Poland-based military consultancy.

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Russian sources confirmed the attack with intense accounts. According to Igor Girkin, a former Russian intelligence officer who led separatist forces in the Moscow-instigated conflict in eastern Ukraine in 2014, Ukrainian special forces carried out lightning raids behind enemy lines “causing panic . . . destroying rear checkpoints, intercepting roads and transport columns.” Reliable communications also led to supporting Ukrainian forces “with precise missile strikes,” while the Russian air force was unable to distinguish “friend from foe in the chaos,” Girkin wrote on Telegram. A woman walks past a damaged building in Kharkiv on Wednesday © Sergey Kozlov/EPA/Shutterstock A lot can go wrong for the Ukrainians. The pace of the advance was so fast that their logistics might become overwhelmed, Muzyka warned. Russia may also launch a counterattack from military bases on the Russian side of the border. The appetite of Western voters to continue sending aid to Ukraine may also shrink due to high energy bills fueled by the Kremlin’s squeeze on gas supplies to Europe. “Military progress in the short term is critical to holding the Western coalition together,” said US scholar Francis Fukuyama. “If Ukraine can regain military momentum before the end of 2022, it will be much easier for the leaders of Western democracies to argue that their peoples should tighten their belts this coming winter,” he wrote. Senior US officials also believe the tide may be turning. William Burns, director of the CIA, said Thursday that while the final chapters of the war remain unwritten, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion appears to be “a failure.” Ukraine’s Western allies have also pledged to boost and maintain military aid. The US announced another $675 million in military aid this week. Austin said the 50 nations that make up the so-called contact group will upgrade their defense industries as they turn to helping Ukraine in the “longer term.” “Every day, we see the determination of allies and partners around the world who are helping Ukraine resist Russia’s illegal, imperial and indefensible war of conquest,” the US defense secretary said Thursday. “We have to evolve as the race evolves.”